Crisis Confidential: The Call We Did Not Want to Make

Our work is built around preventing family separation, so the last call we ever want to make is to the Child Protective Services (CPS) hotline. Families choose to work with us voluntarily, and we walk alongside them through crises rooted in poverty, instability and isolation so children can remain safe at home.

Over the years, we have supported hundreds of families referred through schools, community partners and CPS, helping families stabilize emergencies and, when possible, prevent deeper system involvement.

In rare cases, support alone is not enough. When we believe a child is not safe and a parent declines the help needed to change that, we are required to act.

We try to do it with dignity and with the parent in mind. Our goal is protection, not punishment. When substances are involved, parents may not recognize the level of risk at the moment. When a crisis lifts and parents are sober and stable again, many describe regret about what their children were exposed to, even when harm was not intended.

In more than seven years of work, from a grassroots effort to a nonprofit, we have made two reports to CPS. One involved a child who had been reunified with a parent and told us she did not feel safe at home, describing severe substance use in the household. She later disclosed sexual abuse by that parent. The other time I’m about to describe.

The referral reached us in mid-2022 after repeated contact between a local elementary school and CPS. According to the agency, school staff had been trying for nearly a year to support a mother of five, identified here as Marisol, whose youngest child, Diego, had stopped attending school. 

The child did not have required immunization records or housing verification. Without those documents, the school could not legally allow him to continue attending.

School staff attempted multiple times to help Marisol obtain the paperwork. The records were never submitted. As months passed without progress, the school repeatedly contacted CPS. CPS determined the family needed additional support to prevent further disruption and referred the family to us instead of opening an investigation.

We contacted Marisol the same day through our Spanish-speaking volunteer. Marisol said she wanted Diego back in school and was struggling to complete the paperwork. She did not have a car and relied on others for transportation. Her phone was broken, and she was communicating through an iPad that frequently lost its charge. She said the process felt overwhelming and that she did not know how to get everything done.

We told Marisol we could help enroll her son in school. We offered to meet her at the school, speak directly with staff and help gather the required records. Because Marisol did not have a car, we arranged transportation and offered to pay for Lyft rides. Marisol accepted rides several times but canceled shortly before pickup. We told her we would work at her pace and continued reaching out.

Our Spanish-speaking volunteer stayed in close contact, calling regularly to provide emotional support and help Marisol take one step at a time. Despite consistent outreach, the school paperwork was not completed.

About two weeks after the referral, Marisol agreed to let us visit the home so we could bring food, clothing, shoes and hygiene supplies for the children. When we arrived at the trailer, several adult men were outside sitting on the porch. They said they were relatives. Marisol was not home. The men said the children were inside, but we were not invited in and the children did not come out. When we asked to give the supplies directly to the children, the men said they would pass them along. We left the items and a phone for Marisol to use to contact us.

During that visit, we spoke with one of the men who identified himself as Marisol’s brother, Rafael. In the weeks that followed, we built a relationship with him and began supporting his household as well.

Rafael said he was worried about Marisol’s children. He said Marisol would sometimes leave without telling anyone where she was going, and at times she would not return for days. He said no one in the home knew where she went, and other adults in the household would step in to care for the children.

He said the trailer did not always have running water and that the children would sometimes go to his trailer or to their paternal grandmother’s home to bathe. He said they often did not have enough food. He and the paternal grandmother tried to look out for the children when they could. He also said Marisol was estranged from much of the extended family.

Communication with Marisol continued to deteriorate. She missed calls, canceled transportation and did not complete the school paperwork. The school continued reporting that Diego was not enrolled.

A little over a month after the referral, we returned to the home to bring additional supplies and talk with Marisol in person.

This time, more adults were present. The trailer door was open, and from the porch we could see inside. It was midday, but the interior was dark. Mattresses were spread across the floor, and several adults were sleeping during the day. Trash lined the narrow walkways. Some individuals appeared disoriented.

When Marisol came outside, she had difficulty staying focused and shifted topics frequently. At times, she repeated herself and struggled to track questions. We asked to speak with her privately and talked for about 30 minutes.

We told Marisol we were worried about her safety and the children’s safety and that our goal was to help keep her family safely together. We asked whether she felt safe, what she and the children needed most, and whether the children were safe in the home. We asked directly whether she was using drugs to cope. We told her we understood why people turn to substances during periods of stress. We asked about her health and mental health and whether she felt able to keep herself safe.

Based on more than a month of interactions, her responses and what we observed, we told Marisol we were concerned that substance use might be affecting her ability to keep herself and her children safe. We asked whether there was any family member she and the children could stay with, even temporarily, in more stable living conditions.

We offered support, including treatment resources and the option to attend a Twelve Step meeting with families from our community so she would not have to go alone. We also offered transportation, help getting into an emergency shelter and continued assistance navigating paperwork and services.

Marisol said drugs were not a serious problem. She wanted to stay in the trailer, which she said belonged to her mother, until she and her boyfriend found their own housing. We told Marisol that because we were worried about her safety and the children’s safety, and because she was declining support to address those concerns, we were required to contact CPS. We told her we would have to make a report.

Marisol asked what CPS would do with her and the children. We told her we could not make decisions for CPS, but we would stay involved and advocate for her and for the children’s safety and stability. We told her again that our concern included her safety as well. Marisol told us not to worry about her and went back inside.

After we left, we made a report to the CPS hotline.

While CPS was at the home later that evening, a CPS worker contacted us directly. According to CPS, the trailer had been without running water or electricity for months and contained drug paraphernalia. The worker said trash and debris covered much of the floor, leaving only narrow paths to walk through. Mattresses were scattered throughout the home and appeared soiled. Marisol later tested positive for methamphetamine. The children were removed from the home that night.

Initially, all five children were placed with their aunt, Rosa, and Marisol was allowed to stay there as well. We immediately supported Rosa by bringing beds, food, gift cards and nutritional supplies for the youngest child, who appeared malnourished, so the children could stabilize quickly.

At the same time, we continued offering support to Marisol. We offered to connect her with resources and help her get a job. We told her the door would remain open if she decided she wanted help entering treatment, but we were clear that our assistance needed to begin there. Marisol was not ready to engage in recovery and began disengaging from us and the CPS worker.

As the weeks passed, we developed a closer relationship with Rosa, who told us she was overwhelmed and struggling to afford caring for all five children. She said Marisol was leaving for days at a time and returning mainly for food and supplies, without helping care for the children. Rosa said she was covering the children’s needs on her own and felt she had little support. She didn’t know how long she could afford to continue caring for the children.

We shifted our focus to supporting Rosa so the children could remain stable and stay in her home and their schools. We brought more food and basic supplies to the home, and Rosa began coming to our resource center for clothing, hygiene items and other essentials. We provided gas cards and Uber rides, with Rosa coordinating transportation during the initial transition. When her car became unreliable, we helped pay for repairs so she could continue getting the children to school and appointments.

As the case progressed, the children were formally placed into CPS custody. Three of the boys remained with Rosa. The two oldest children, both girls, were placed with their paternal grandmother, Carmen, who lived nearby and had long been part of their lives, allowing the siblings to remain connected.

We expanded support to both households. We helped Carmen pay electric bills, apply for food assistance and other benefits, and secure child care. We stayed in regular communication with the CPS worker to help ensure the children could remain with family and to provide whatever support was needed to make that possible.

When concerns were raised in court about whether the relatives could afford to care for the children, we worked alongside the CPS worker to document the support already in place and outline additional assistance we would provide. The CPS worker advocated for the children to remain with relatives, and we committed to continued material and relational support.

Over the next year, we remained in close contact with both households. We spoke with the relative caregivers weekly, offering emotional support and helping them navigate appointments, school needs and court requirements. We provided clothing, cleaning supplies, food, hygiene items and ongoing nutritional support for the youngest child.

We also participated in team meetings with CPS and spoke with the Court Appointed Special Advocate on the case. We advocated for the children’s expressed wishes to remain with relatives and worked to help the families demonstrate to the court that they could provide safe, stable homes.

A little over a year after the children were first removed, the court granted guardianship to the relatives.

The family remained part of our community throughout and after the case. They attended events, received supplies and holiday gifts and stayed connected. The children improved academically and maintained a relationship with their mother through appropriate boundaries established by the relative caregivers.

Today, the youth serve on the KinRise Youth Advisory Council, helping build a space for other young people living in relative care. They are in school, doing well academically, and are helping shape the same community that stepped in for them.

What began as a call we did not want to make became a long-term commitment to them and their family. We offered support first, made a report only when safety required it and stayed involved after the crisis passed.

The children are growing up in homes where relatives chose them. Rosa and Carmen took them in, kept them connected as siblings across two nearby households, and carried the daily work that helps turn a crisis into stability: school mornings, doctor visits, meals, homework and bedtime. 

The family remained connected and supported by our community and now maintain a relationship with their mother. 

This was not the outcome we initially hoped for, but it was the safest outcome for the children at the time and one where the children would stay with their family and the people who love them most.

The door remains open for Marisol whenever she is ready to do the hard work to heal.